Secondary Menu

Bartop Arcade for Dell Rotating Monitor

About: Hi, I am Richard, Father of 1 son + 2 step sons, so we have a house full of Lego. I have had lego for decades, including Lego mindstorms. I like to make things. In my little garage I have a large CNC machin...
More About the_anykey »

I always see all these cool Arcade projects fly by on facebook, but never convinced myself before to also make one. I did not want to make a full size Arcade, because where would I put it ??? :-(

As the Raspberry PI 3 is now available, I think it is finally powerful enough to play the easier mame / atari 2600 games, so I can re-live some of my childhood moments and show some history to my touch screen addicted kids :-)

Ok, let's make one!!! First choice to make; do I make one for landscape (Atari 2600; Hero, River-raid, Decathlon) or portrait (Arcade Games like PacMan, Galaga & Donkey Kong). I could not decide :-( It's like choosing between your kids, Atari or Arcade... I decide to make an bar-top Arcade machine based on a Dell FP1707 monitor. This was a very popular office monitor and has build-in support for 90 degrees rotation (portrait / landscape). So ideal for this project!

Step 1: Designing and Creating the "box"

As I have a CNC machine, I designed a model that can easily be machined. I used 9mm multiplex birch plywood that I cut on my cnc machine with a 2mm bit. Of course you could also use a laser cutter, or some old fashion manual labor to manufacture. it.

I design all my 2D work with a program called Draftsight, it is free and easy to use. I save my files as DXF files and then use my CNC cam software (cncgraf) to work out the paths for my CNC machine.

In the DXF/DWG file, there are 2 layers that I designed specifically for my 2mm bit, these are "direct" paths, so no tool correction. All other layers you would have to apply your own tool correction on is you use an CNC.

The box is designed to be tightly fit to all pieces, so screws needed, at best some wood glue. I did not glue the bottom plate, so I can easily do maintenance in case that is needed.

Step 3: Let's Play!

So after putting it all together, it is fairly easy. I used Retropie which offers a fully pre-installed SD card image for the raspberry so you are directly up and running. All you have to do is configure the button in emulation station (just follow the wizard) and setup the keys in Mame (just start any mame game and hit <tab>)

Safe and Secure Challenge

Warm and Fuzzy Contest

Toys Contest

5 Discussions

Are you able to configure the emulators to play in portrait or landscape automatically? So if you fire up mame it loads portrait but snes, genesis etc are landscape or do you need to change it each time?